In 1919, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius and
his wife, Marcet, worked for a socialist newspaper in Girard, Kansas. They
decided to buy the operation; but far more important than the press itself
was their circulation list, containing 175,000 names and addresses. They
sent out letters to every name on the list with an offer: for $5, a
subscriber would receive 50 books in the coming year. 5,000 people took
him up on the offer, and with $25,000 in the bank, they very quickly
printed the first fifty books.

It took them until 1923 to settle on
the name "Little Blue Book," going through a string of monikers before
they did so. By this time, most of the books were some color other than
blue, but the name stuck.

By 1928, they were becoming a part of
American culture. He got endorsements from people like Richard Byrd, who
took a box of them on his South Pole expedition. People were calling
Haldeman-Julius "the Henry Ford of Literature," for bringing us books that
were affordable to the common man.

I can find no information on the "Big
Blue Books," but I assume they sold for a dime. There are no more pages,
but because of the paper size, the printed content was much longer. Their
book numbers were preceded by a "B-."

By the outbreak of WWII, J. Edgar
Hoover had branded Haldeman-Julius a communist, which obviously hurt
subscription levels. Haldeman-Julius died in 1951, but the press was kept
running by his sons at a low output until the press building and warehouse
burned in 1978.